On Wed, 9 Jul 2003 09:32:17 +0100, "Dave" wrote:

Sorry if this is not the right group.
We are in the process of buying our first house a 4 bed semi built 1950's we
have been given the option of three different types of survey, Standard
valuation, Homebuyers report, Full structural survey and I'm not sure which
type we would be best having as this is all very new to us, can anyone offer
any advise please?

At the risk of being somewhat trite:

- the standard valuation is for your building society / bank to work
out how much they're prepared to lend you

- the housebuyers' report is to give you ammunition to beat the
seller's price down (potentially saving you money on the purchase)

- the full survey is the only one that will actually reveal structural
or other significant defects with the property (potentially saving you
from buying a problematic house that's going to cost a lot of £££ to
put right after you've bought).

The last of these will tell you what's wrong with the property and
what you'll need to do to fix it. The homebuyers' report will only
tell some of the things that *might* be wrong with the property, and
some suggestions as to what you *might* do to find out what the real
problem is. Before deciding which to go for, you should take a good
look at the property, inside and out, looking for signs of problems
(and for signs of recent repairs). If you're lucky enough to know a
good builder, ask him/her to come and have a look at the property with
you. If the house is in a development with other similar houses, look
at them for signs of problems/recent repairs that might also be found
in the one you're interested in.

BTW, your lender *should* have explained these options to you, but I
guess that these days they jusy give you a bunch of leaflets to peruse
and forms to fill in :-(

HTH
Julian


--
Julian Fowler
julian (at) bellevue-barn (dot) org (dot) uk